Maybe
by Novoux
Summary: "I love you" doesn't mean anything if Roppi doesn't believe it. Shizuo thinks that maybe he can, some day. Shizuo/Roppi; for thirteen-forty-two. Rated for mentions of self-harm and depression.


"Just relax for a moment, yeah?" Fingers in Roppi's hair, combing out the tangles easily pulled with careful movements as to not harm him. He knows Shizuo would never do more than a tug at a particularly hard knot or a bite to his throat to mark possession, being the beast he is. But there are times he _can't _sit still for too long and Shizuo knows that today is one of those days again, Roppi lying next to him and uncomfortable from having his head in the lap of a monster. Worse even when he is the monster of the two of them compared, not from natural origins and never enough to be the real version what he's meant to represent. Human.

"You're fidgeting so much it's gonna make me antsy." Shizuo starts again and it's quiet in the stale scent of cigarettes and cheap apartment, Roppi knowing Shizuo can't afford to have better luxuries like the silent cleanliness of Izaya's apartment. Doesn't make sense why he escapes whenever the chance arises and most of the time with new markings on his arms. Reminders of who he is, he finds them to be calming enough to not have a panic attack in front of so many ugly people. Not meant to be this way at all—Shizuo shouldn't even be trying anymore with him.

Days are meant to be spent doing as Izaya asks. Retrieve certain things, go out in public, leave the office for a day. He's not useful in any way but wasting space, as Namie puts it in a conversation she states loudly enough that she doesn't care if Roppi hears. It's his problem, she reasons, and it's not in the beginning he thinks it to be true. Although things start to break, crumble apart and routines become listless motions falling apart, Roppi can't ever find a place to stand on the surface and not drown beneath it.

He once thinks he's important to the one who creates him. Izaya surely made him for a reason, right? So why does he keep lowering expectations for Roppi, dismissing and treated just the same as all the other humans Izaya adores, but Izaya does not will not should not love him. No one is supposed to love an ugly monster, likened to the god who he is created from and this isn't supposed to feel any sort of pain in the silent realizations of a blade to the skin will only create imperfections. Even Izaya mentions that Roppi isn't important. An experiment that failed, because Roppi is too human to be a god and too monstrous to be human. An ugly mix of in between never to be labeled otherwise than a monster and Izaya remarks that even Shizu-chan is more human than him at times.

Today doesn't feel like anything at all. A big empty gray yawn, too tired to keep eyes open and too tired to fall asleep. Shizuo has to deal with these ups and downs when Roppi escapes Izaya's company after too long of spending days in silence or cruelly-intentioned tasks to pick up simple objects with too many people around. When he can't pretend that it's not horrifying—panic anger frustration sobbing cutting biting _screaming—_sometimes certain things bubble up and peak, like bubbles of carbon dioxide in one of Izaya's favorite wines, rising to the glass' lip after the foam calms and he sees the liquid as red as his eyes. Izaya's as well, but the wine has more vivid expression than Roppi could ever hold between his unsteady fingers.

Quiet breaths punctuate his thoughts. "What're you thinking about?" Shizuo's calm, quiet, and intense, making Roppi far too aware of his own stupidity, allowing himself to lie with a human-like monster and he himself is a monster that can't corrupt any more than he already has. Izaya knows him to be useless, there is nothing of his body that is his and therefore it creates the rising lines from thighs to arms. Shizuo gets quiet in these moments, running out of things to say is all Roppi can understand to himself in his own amateur reasoning, directed toward aggressive self-depreciating thoughts that Shizuo doesn't like to hear.

"Too much," Roppi decides on when the thoughts in his head are buzzing and the white noise is frustrating, forever there never deciding to leave even if he sleeps with Shizuo, lying next to him curled up and wrapped in freshly-washed sheets because Shizuo doesn't mean to hurt him. He really doesn't, the cuts just pop in the last time they try to get anywhere past kissing and touching and he's sorry, he really is and he's so angry at himself because he bleeds all over the bed. In the end, Shizuo buys new sheets and Roppi slips money into his wallet so they won't have to fight about it. All of these things strip away the smallest layers of Shizuo's patience. Roppi's waiting until he snap-bang-pops and lets go of the building anger that's certainly for him. It only makes sense.

The building ache in his throat feels tight and leaking like one of the ceilings in Shizuo's apartment before he patches it up. Watching the muscles quiver with commanded strength, all Roppi thinks is that he can't do the same things that Shizuo can and while they're different in strength one of them is real and one of them is the monster. He wishes the lines are more blurred like the times he can't see straight and he doesn't want Shizuo to know when he holds onto his thinning waist deep into the night and Roppi still tries to slip away. Sometimes he does for the sake of habit and not wanting to keep hurting more than he already knows to mess with. The times he does realize these sorts of things they're when it's quiet and alone even in the arms that are strong enough to crush every last feeling of too damp and cold or too hot and burning to stay on his tongue when he wants to shout at whatever is the closest. Sometimes they shatter his own mirror and Izaya clicks his tongue, laughing when Roppi murmurs to himself that _maybe _it's not a very good idea.

Shizuo isn't very good with giving affection and Roppi isn't any better with receiving it. Nicer in the way they don't have to fight over it. "Don't think about anything. Too complicated," he sounds like giving up and melting ice cream in the winter time—filled with impossibilities and even though it's cold outside in which the gun in his hand is the heart he's been playing with the tiny fingers of his, perfect replicas and still hurting too much when he tries to cut the veins. They're strings to him and that's why each of his fingers Shizuo takes in his mouth as kisses, lips moving gently around the scars of blades that are jagged fine lines from fucking up too badly to say more than nothing when Shizuo patches him up. It's how they usually find each other from bleeding to fighting and Roppi finds himself full of second chances and bad choices. The blond monster is not a monster but the monster that Roppi aspires to be in the hope that in understanding his own messy origin Shizuo will still care about him in the odd way he does. Roppi never knows why Shizuo cares so much for someone so broken.

Roppi doesn't answer him, watching Shizuo with heavy eyelids and his throat is damp with sour tastes filling with lumps of salt catching in the muscles. When he swallows the saliva in his mouth it is tinged with mucus and salt, a queasy combination he finds in the strangest assortments of embarrassment or flushing a gentler shade of red when Shizuo's eyes catch his. The blond always likes affectionate things and Roppi finds himself too good to be true in having the complete attention of a monster, bright and filled with warning signs screaming danger and he can't help but be drawn to them. A simple curiosity sparking into a new flame burning old and still kindling with the stronger pulse of wanting to know the pulse that he can hear pressing into his ear and always stronger than his.

Pulling Roppi's fingers from his dry lips—cracked, just starting to bleed from a nasty run-in with Izaya earlier today—Shizuo presses the fingers against his cheek, stretching out the palm to a thin covering of skin on skin. It feels warm and comforting, wet and soggy when too hot with blood and Roppi can't stand thinking about what lies beneath the edges of skin sewn together to form the person that is supposedly in love with him. Things like these aren't tangible at all and so very confusing, creating havoc when he wants to understand the many questions of why he exists and why Shizuo hasn't killed him and doesn't seem to plan on it. Always punctuated by meaningless death threats whenever he's in a darkly humorous mood, there's no real point into saying such empty murmurs if only to catch Roppi's attention for a little longer. From the blond's cheek Roppi feels the jaw moving, swallowing involuntarily and muscles sliding together like locks clicking after a key in silent succession.

The look in the brown eyes when Roppi has Shizuo's blue sunglasses folded neatly and on his stomach says too much and a lot of things Roppi doesn't know. "Do you want to talk about it?" he sighs, a little exasperated and in the depression of realizing things aren't always slippery smooth and Shizuo is still angry at him for the stunt of this morning's freshly-opened cuts on his right forearm. He doesn't mean it like he doesn't mean to look away when it's just how he happens to be. Thankfully Shizuo is one of few words but the ones he does say Roppi can't help but ponder if they're saved for the same face of someone else a little more human with a stronger heartbeat and maybe his own ears are deceiving him.

Maybe—"No," he reassures Shizuo, fingers curling when they retreat into Shizuo's dry blond locks, bleach blond highlighted for danger and assessing the signs of being this far in to the lion's den. Roppi supposes he doesn't care all that much, having played with death for most of the time with or without Shizuo and the difference is the times he feels like suffocating in the grip of someone else is when he's with Shizuo and those brown eyes are sharp and watching him. It's always when he makes a mistake—always an accident, always on purpose, always never knowing why Shizuo keeps putting up with all the accidental discoveries of Roppi attempting to tear himself apart. The scars are his and he doesn't like them at all, he soon realizes, but it's just hard to stop the temptation.

Organs clenching tightly, lungs filling with the fluid of whatever his heart pumps because it surely doesn't feel the same connection to the liquid metal that bleeds from every razor split, Roppi pretends he can still breathe. His eyes blink and they're starting to slow as he notices that he's more tired than he wants to believe. More human than he needs to be but still not enough to be _perfect _which is probably why Shizuo doesn't treat him like a delicate human being though as for something broken there—there isn't much to say. Folding into the shape of Shizuo's lap and not wanting to betray the ugly useless stupid thoughts he has in his head (banging against the walls and screaming for release every night he sees himself) his eyes stay shuttered like camera lenses. Powering off, the sigh wet and damp in his chest deep into his lungs of breathing the same stale air of never being able to let go.

Death feels like a nicer option to whatever gray yawn today is like every other day. They both know by now that it's not Shizuo's fault yet Roppi is the one who can't see past the things that force him make him become him when he's nervous and upset and on the floor, blood trickling down his arm in surely scars that he doesn't mean. Just lie every time and see what happens when Shizuo runs a hand through his tired head and pulls back his messy hair, helps Roppi off the floor and fixes what he sees on the outside with bandages, Roppi never wants to talk about it. There's nothing—he doesn't see the problem besides himself—to say. Nothing to convey the feeling of wanting to stop _existing _and even if he has the chance to live he can't say he's sure he wants it. What he has with Shizuo is lonely and bitter when he doesn't know how to love a monster back.

Wildfires start in the heat of the smoke rising, Shizuo thinking all the time that it's his fault and Roppi shouldn't be the one to not tell him that it's not. Well—he does try, he does and he still tries no matter the hollow feelings echoing in his chest when it doesn't get the message through. The things he wants to say are swollen like cotton balls and medicinal alcohol, stinging and they always hurt with scorching fire and they leave antiseptic smells of starting over. Each and every time he chokes on his words so he can't say anything worthwhile to make Shizuo reconsider his own involvement and maybe they should just give up now so Shizuo can stop beating himself up over nothing that is his fault. They fight like these things are easy to mop up the floor when Roppi bleeds too much over pouring himself out and having Shizuo try to fix what he can is more than he deserves.

"I hate this," Shizuo speaks up and his hand tightens on Roppi's, nuzzling against them but his expression is troubled and starting with the first veins of anger pulsing beneath the skin. Glancing up at him doesn't solve much and Roppi's eyes widen though he tries to school his expression, startled (almost as badly as feeling nervous, when are they coming to this) by the rage setting the sparks in brown eyes. Roppi doesn't know what to do—he's not sure of how to even comfort himself but Shizuo is still so very angry and his nerves are on fire. "I hate that you sit here, and I can't do anything about _this._" When have they come to these things and there isn't a reason why Roppi should be nervous, Hachimenroppi means _versatile _and he's anything but useful.

Nothing he can say. Shizuo keeps talking because even if he knows that Roppi hates it in these sorts of discussions nothing can contain the anger and no amount of soothing chilled scarred damaged fingers will ever make it okay. "I can see it—don't tell me that I don't. There isn't nothing wrong with you if you're like this and you can't even tell me why." The blond shakes his head and every knowledgeable insight he has is telling him to leave, leave, leave, go now and don't come back to whatever fantasy this is. But Shizuo's holding him down, a gentle hand over his stomach and fingers curling into his ribs where he tucks in every word that he doesn't say in fear of wanting too much he can't have. "You know I hate seeing you like this. You know that every time you don't tell me anything I get angry."

(The fault is _his_ and Shizuo just doesn't realize the obviousness of the intent for being—)

"Don't," he warns, brown melting into the dark red of dried blood and empty things to say running on dry land with water turning to blood. "Don't apologize to me. I said that you don't have to tell me anything, and I'm sticking with that." As much as he wants to breathe it's caught in the wet grasp of his throat and lumping up to something sticky and slick, churning in his stomach when he doesn't want to hear it no matter the fact that Shizuo won't let him slip away. "You know...you know I want you to be something instead of so damn miserable. You can't let all of this shit keep you where you're at."

Roppi shakes his head because he's not hearing this and he can't hear this he doesn't want to—fingers curl and soothe the ache underneath his ribs where his heart is meant to be but surely the thing is broken and dead. "There's nothing you can do," sighing means admitting failure and it's what he hates to do and Shizuo hates it more than Roppi can imagine, reasons unfathomable to why he still pretends that he has to care. "It doesn't matter. Stop trying to make it worth what it's not." As quick and sharp as his tongue may be the blade still pierces him instead when Shizuo's eyes harden and narrow, thinking of messing up this time (over and over he still can't get this right) and bracing for impact. Sure as to hit him with words or violence that will heal because if he does it to himself then he'll leave too many marks.

"Stop fucking doing that." Shizuo growls low in his throat and rumbling to the source of tightening his fingers on Roppi's shirt, warning calls like bells tolling. "Stop fucking putting yourself down. I hate listening to it because I know that it's not true." Squirming, Roppi means to get out of Shizuo's grasp but the hands on him are tight and for moments of—truly, not breathing when he's suffocating himself—panic he feels lightheaded and filled with air and danger. Curling up and sobbing won't solve anything and being far beyond the point of emotional numbness he doesn't understand the reason why Shizuo's fingers trace circles in his back. Or why he's still here, maybe even why he's still alive this early in the day to consider tomorrow that he won't know if he can breathe again. It's a rotting sort of ache, damp and cold and wet all the time frustrating in the knowledge that Shizuo can't feel it and Roppi thinks of it as too much to give to him to carry with heavy hands and no heart of his to hold if he doesn't _have_ one.

Candles and wax to make a human being, he thinks. Like the sliding warmth of melting wax from his eyes that's not supposed to be there. "Roppi, look at me. Don't you dare turn your head away." Shizuo's fingers come to the side of his face when Roppi pulls his hand away, wanting to retract and end this now. "Come on, Roppi, don't." Hands slide beneath him and it feels so tight, wanting to swallow over himself again and the words are stinging into his throat when he can't voice them, covering his face and a dry smile slapping against bloody skin lies to Shizuo for him. But he can't get away, not as Shizuo hauls him up into sitting and then there are lips on his face, tracing trails of leaking wetness just like the bathroom ceiling to find the root cause.

And this time there isn't one—there are too many options, too many decisions to make or break them apart because Roppi doesn't know what love is though he can want it crave it and need it all he wants. There's no reason for words because they're still meaningless no matter what Shizuo says it's not going to deter the fact that there is a razor pressing into Roppi's mind tracking rails on his skin if he gets to the train of thought he's been looking for. Shizuo still holds him for some reason, kisses turning wet and Roppi doesn't say _no _when he means it when he wants just to stop thinking of stupid answers and having to come up with explanations for nothing. Nothing much to explain when all he can see is the dark gaping holes in logic, filling with blood as soon as Roppi makes one bad decision after another and they crisscross on his skin from too much experience. Even Shizuo can only do so much and it's never going to fix him and they're okay with that—Roppi is guilty to wishing that Shizuo could.

Lips slide over his, locking and deeper than brushing when Shizuo's press over and ease the splits in his own lip. It's not imaginable that the salty taste of leaking eyes helps with not burning the bloodied cuts but Roppi tastes him on the faintest notes of just catching in between the seam of his lips, molding and soft despite the chapped feeling. Not like his own are worth anything—dry, anxiety-bitten like fleas having a feast on the blood that pools and he figures that kisses may not be supposed to taste like blood and steel and smoke folding over and over. Into his mouth, just so he parts like habit and it feels good and when they do things that are simple these are the moments Roppi doesn't have to use any sort of thinking. Even if his eyes don't close and Shizuo's fingers are on him, holding and gentle but firm and never meaning to let go. The brown of his eyes disappears behind his eyelids when he presses more kisses, soft and bitter with bad blood and tainted love.

"Roppi," Shizuo sighs like it's the worst thing he's done today, exasperated to the bone and too tired to keep up so he kisses like dwindling ends of cigarettes. Roppi doesn't want to look at him, even if the slivers of his eyes start to open a little wider and probably—swallow him whole, he really can't expect this—shiver just a bit more. "You can't keep doing this to yourself. It'll drive you mad." Which he knows already and he knows more than he wants to know because information is like a hard drive in his brain constantly functioning and no real purpose when he knows too much. Even if at that it's still not enough to apologize for the things he may or may not say out loud before he thinks and before he speaks. Situations like these it's best to draw and not answer but lick at Shizuo's lips, trying to divulge in sharing other information that doesn't involve talking because as long as he can forget then maybe he can pretend to be normal.

Shizuo doesn't feel like he minds, warm and dry unlike the fact that Roppi never seems to be when soaking in his own misery-drenched blood draining out of the perfectly spaces crisscross scars on his arms and down his legs. Every single part that means something to him because Izaya doesn't share the marks and so that's what makes them his. He doesn't feel _perfect _(it's such a pipe dream beaten over the head like the first time Shizuo mistakes him for Izaya and he never kisses Izaya either) and he certainly never will, maybe not. Just an awkward tangle of tongues and shyness and basking in the fact that his mind clears when filling with the toxins of addiction and cigarette smoke that sizzle along his taste buds.

Maybe he can try again.

* * *

_This is a little drabble for thirteen-forty-two, who is so kind to recommend me on Tumblr and so I came up with this as a thank you note. I hope you enjoy, and thank you very much._

_Notice a spelling mistake? Let me know._

_Thank you for reading._


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